


i have told you where i'm coming from

by Macremae



Series: dear innocence, your forgiveness [2]
Category: Pacific Rim (Movies)
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen, Hopeful Ending, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Abuse, Implied/Referenced Mind Control, Mind Control Aftermath & Recovery, Post-Movie: Pacific Rim: Uprising (2018)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-18
Updated: 2020-03-18
Packaged: 2021-02-28 18:41:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,705
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23191810
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Macremae/pseuds/Macremae
Summary: And sometimes, that fate is a survival.
Relationships: Newton Geiszler/Hermann Gottlieb
Series: dear innocence, your forgiveness [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1667350
Comments: 2
Kudos: 13





	i have told you where i'm coming from

**Author's Note:**

> so essentially the way part 1 (aka charles' story) worked is that i wrote the dialogue, and he wrote it up as pr newt's perspective. so I was like hey lemme write this from post pru's pov and he was like hell yeah so here we go. based off the prompt he got: PR1 Newt encounters post-PRU Newt when they both are drifting. meant to be read in the rhythm of Richard Siken's style, since both titles are from Litany in Which Certain Things Are Crossed Out. read it aloud if you can!

“Are you me?”

Intro black space, your home formerly, his home possibly, in the way that time is weird like that. What a question. What’s your answer? Are you still going to pretend like you have all the answers? Like anything does? Like any answer to this cold, marvelous, crazy hurricane full of flowers that has become your life, could satisfy the ache inside you that begs to know what it all meant? You decide upon stalling, our lady of perpetual remedy, bless her heart and let’s try it again this time (see?). Hold the question mark. Don’t want to seem too eager. 

“Depends.”

He doesn’t look satisfied. God, that’s so fucking you. Bastard. 

“Cryptic. On?”

Oo, that’s a tough one. And delves into psychological philosophy that makes you extremely uncomfortable due to the implications for your personality and soul! But really, who are you to possibly lie to yourself.

“At what point you consider someone stops being themself, and I guess becomes a different version.”

He blinks. “That makes… literally no sense.”

You snort. “Yeah. Spending a lot of time in your own head makes you get real philosophical. And annoying.”

He looks confused at that, then a furrow in his brow makes it twitch. A look spreads across his face like a car fire, horror reaching each corner as something happens in front of his eyes that you both cannot see, and yet know intimately, like, you dunno, a cancer.

His breath catches in an ugly gulp. “Oh. Oh, fuck. Jesus Christ, dude.”

“Yep,” you say, popping the “p” as if there’s a way to make this casual.

His face is white as a sheet, and he looks at you like a burn victim. “Thatー” His voice almost trails off in a whimper. “That’s gonna happen to me?”

You shrug, eyebrows flicking up and down. “Well, in theory. Personally, I think you’re a hallucinatory version of myself that my brain cooked up to try and give me some sort of…” You pause and squint at him. “Dream closure? I’m like 80% sure I’m asleep right now. Give or take a few points off the alpha.”

“Fuck off,” he spits, “how do I know _you’re_ the real one?”

You give him the brand of eye-roll you usually reserve for the cadets when they suggest a comparison that flies way over your forty-something head. “Because dream selves can’t tell the actual future, dipshit; you’re me, we’re smarter than this.”

You can hear panic rising in his voice now as he shoots back, “Apparently not, seeing as youー weー whatever, Drifted with a fucking Kaiju brain!”

Oof. That stings. “Yeah, shove together a delicate mix of PTSD, a life shakeup, and alien mind control and you’ve got a real shitty chemical reaction, Peabody,” you snap, fingers curling in and out of a loose fist. Who the fuck does this guy think he is? Give a man all the facts, and he’ll still find some way to call you an idiot.

“Don’t we have a reminder on our phone to take our meds?” he asks. 

“It got eaten,” you answer dryly. The memory flashes in his eyes.

“Oh, so that’s where it went. Fuck. Probably still tasted better than Hannibal, though.”

A laugh, surprisingly, springs from your mouth. “Man,” you say grinning, “I forgot I can be funny.”

“Jesus, what a terrifying thing to forget, dude; that’s like our one redeeming social quality slash skill,” he says in an articulated rush. Humor to cope! They start so young. “How the hell did you get amnesty talking like someone from a Wes Anderson film high on shrooms?”

You pull the corners of your mouth down in a pantomime of a frown, as if to say, “beats me”. “Probably because it displays evidence of trauma or depression or “learning my lesson’ or whatever.”

Anger blooms outwards in his face, his shoulders visibly tensing. “What fucking part of this was a ‘lesson we needed to learn’? What the fuck?!”

Ha! You could ask them the same question. Uh oh, Newt’s highly compromised neural defenses couldn’t stand up to literal alien mind trebuchets (trebuchi? You’ll Google it) and he, like, fucking spiraled! Clearly, this is his fault and we need to strap him to an unsexy torture chair for several months while he workshops his tight five with said aliens. This will improve the aforementioned mental defenses. We are a good paramilitary governmental organization. For realsies.

You raise your hands defensively. “Hey, all I said was ‘give me a place in the Highlands with no people for at least ten miles and a clause in my watchdog contract that lets me buy as much fertilizer as I need’, and they said ‘thank you for your service Dr. Gottlieb please stop making the UN members cry’. I don’t really care what they think of me.”

He swallows hard. ‘Yeah, but like… fuck. All that stuff’s gonna happen to me?”

You shrug. “Essentially. Have a nice decade.”

“Thatー” his face reddens with indignation, “that’s not fair!”

Annoyance sparks in the pit of your stomach, and you glare at him. “You think I’m not, like, intensely aware of that, dude? That I don’t have residual anger over the fact that I literally sold my soul to save the world, and then lost ten years of my fucking life and another few months in torture jail?” You can feel your pulse quickening as you gesture widely at him with your hand. “Yeah! It is, in fact, super unfair! And I don’t really know what my brain is even doing with you!”

His eyes widen. “What do you mean?”

The words pour out of you like bile, your limbs feeling jerky and tight. “Whyー why show me this? Why fucking torture me with the person I used to be before all this shit happened, like ‘hahaha look Newt you were so only lightly traumatized’!? Like, I fucking look at you, or me, or whatever, and how am I not supposed to get sick at everything that hasn’t happened to you yet?!”

“You think it doesn’t scare me too?” he spits. You feel your nose burn, a sure sign of tears, but the absurdity of this whole thing, and the sight of him; hair short, eyes still blue-green, posture with only the slightest hunch, fills you with a mixture of melancholy and rage that makes you want to tear his ghost to pieces.

“You are a dream!” you scream, stomping your foot. “You’re not real! You don’t get to be scared here!”

“Fuck off, yes I do! I’m still you, buddy,” he says viciously, pointing at his chest with his thumb, “and I still get to look at everything I know is gonna happen and be terrified! I meanー” his voice takes on a desperate edge, “what am I even supposed to do with all this? I can’t change what’s gonna happen; I’m not real, I get it, but I still don’t want to beー to beー”

All the fight drains from you in an instant, and you feel your limbs slump with a weight that defies explanation, or logic, or any idea that it will be gone completely. “Yeah,” you say, voice hoarse and quiet. “I don’t have a word for it either.”

People have called it many things, and nothing fits the gravity. None of them take the inexplicability of it all off your chest. Sometimes, there are feelings and acts that no language on Earth can condense into a human sound. 

He lets out a small, weak huff of a breath. “What even happened to us?” he asks.

You sniff, throat tight for a lot of reasons, and shrug. The motion is a base reaction now. “We made it through. That’s supposed to be enough.”

It’s not. “It’s not.”

“I know,” you say. “I’m jealous of you, honestly, but… I mean, it’s stupid.”

He smirks ever so slightly. “Try us.”

You let out a single, “Ha.” Then, with anxious honesty, “I look at you and I don’t know whether to feel terrified or a little bit better.”

“Why’s that?”

You stare at him, and he’s so much bigger than you ever will be again. No little white strikes of lightning winding around his skin. No dark puddles around his eyes that feel haunted. But the shape is the same. The structure is there, despite a hurricane leaving its big, clumsy scrapes across the walls. A dual bob in your throats as you swallow in sync.

“Because after all those years…” you say, a twisting in your chest that’s painful in a comforting way, “it’s still me. You are. I am. We’re different, but… we’re not.”

“Is it bad if I don’t want to be you?” he asks softly.

“Nah,” you say, one half of your mouth curving upwards. “I wouldn’t want to be me, either. But that’s the way it is. We make it through, though.”

“It hurts.”

“A lot,” you finish. “It did, and it still does. But we’ve got Hermann. And friends. And the chickens.”

He laughs, shaking his head from side to side. “Living out that sweet, sweet homosocial pastoral fantasy.”

There’s a full smile on your face now, and you know that you both think you could find that again. “Yeah. Here’s looking at you, kid.” You _are_ are forty something, after all. 

“My condolences,” he jokes. You shake your own head.

“Nah. It’s okay.”

You walk forward a few paces and, tentatively at first, your hands shaking, then firmly, pull your arms around yourself and pull him close, understanding with a sudden shudder (laughter, tears, or relief, you really can’t say) that you cannot go back to what once was, and how wonderful that freedom is. He grips your arms tightly, fingers covered in calluses you will one day regain, and holds what you know to be your own image of promise tight like a talisman. 

“Am I gonna be okay?” he asks, voice thick. You wonder if you should tell him the truth, then realize how futile that is. Lying to yourself brought ten years of… well. Maybe one day you’ll find a name for it.

“No,” you reassure him gently. “Then yes. You’ll get better at it.”


End file.
